Tag: Wisdom (Page 1 of 6)

A Lifetime Ago

April 19, 2022 / Tom

Lost in the fray of my own frazzled mind, I bow.

I was not good enough, or I was too good. There was no hope in you for me even as you hoped for all you never had. You walked and I watched, you ran and I agreed. You forgot and I let you remember.

I scared you, or so you said. I was a force, or so you suggested. There you were, set free upon the altar of great love, blaming the very key that unlocked your chains and left them piled on the floor. You blamed them for your fear, for your consequence, and then you hid behind the creature you feared the most.

Time. We just need time. Time to remember the moments of quivering ecstasy as we laid gasping for air, our sweat mixing into pools upon the ground.

More. We want more. I want more of your body taking mine into agreement. You want more of me owning all that you wish to give. Yet here we are. Me being too good or not good enough, hopeful in this hopelessness, a spectator in a sport that sees you run in some other direction. There is no sense to this senselessness. We will just have to walk our paths alone.

Memories. They curse at me as they bring me to my fullest arousal. I will move on. I always have, but I shall not forget. Memories that both tease me and lift me to the sky will ensure I remember. The pulsing throb in my manhood matching time with the echo in my chest will drive me toward dreams long since left behind. I shall let go as I hold on, my prayer being shouted the same as always as the eruptions remind me of what has been gained, then lost, then gained again.

You will whisper my name again someday. Perhaps such music will be played in your aloneness as your mind and your fingers wander to those hidden places. Maybe the song will be shouted as your hips buck and your flesh shakes. Certainly there will be a moment when your heart beats and your mind hears my name. You will then reach for me, find nothing but the space you asked to be created, and wish I was there to remind you of the kingdom we could have created.

I wrote this a lifetime ago.

Yet it could have been written at any time. Fuck those who take their concept of time so literal as to make it part of my existence. To hell with those who seek to make me old, or young, or tired, or plagued by their insanity. They cannot hear their roar for the sounds of the chattering in their heads, and they cannot see their promise as the fog of fear gathers before their eyes. Who am I to tell them any different? Who I am to stifle my own howl because they cannot stand the sound of their own warrior voice?

Talk all you’d like. Walk all you can stand. You will still be a puppy unable to see the moonlight. You are blinded by your mother’s tit, eyes closed as you take the nipple, being fed all that you can stand of all that she can offer.

Yet I will still love you as I have a lifetime ago. I feel no bitterness toward either of our limitations. I have forgiven you much in the way I have forgiven myself.

Time will always try to get the better of me. I may die never again hearing your voice, but I will have heard it once. Your music may be silent in my ears, but I have known its rhythm. Perhaps even the moments of great losses I have found great wins, even if in my final moments I exist in an empty space with only the memories to hold my hand.

If only I had listened…

April 21, 2020 / Tom

Here’s what I can say to those who are protesting public health measures put in place to protect our economy, our people and our community. I say it in love since that is, right now, all I have to offer. No data will convince you. No science will sway you. Perhaps love is the way to your salvation.

Right now, you feel fine. It’s easy to protest things that oppose your ideas of freedom, of capitalism, and of ideology. It’s always easy to adhere to a principle when it’s not being challenged. It’s easy to be strong when you don’t really need to be.

Perhaps soon, your recklessness will catch up with you. You may feel a tickle in your throat or an ache in your body. “It’s no big deal,” you will say to yourself. You may, if you are one who can admit making a mistake, put yourself in quarantine to protect those you love or you may continue your recklessness and ensure those around you that “it’s no big deal.”

Perhaps that cough and ache get worse, and maybe your fever starts to spike. You’ve felt this before, it’s no big deal. You’ve always recovered in the past with some antibiotics and rest. You call your doctor, who says you are showing signs of coronavirus. He says quarantine at home. He tells you that there is no treatment, that antibiotics don’t work with this virus. You’ll just have to ride it out and hope it doesn’t get worse.

And no, there is no test that they can give you. You aren’t sick enough to warrant a test.

That angers you. You have the right to know what you have. Ah, they remind you, this is a serious pandemic, and everything has changed. There are just not nearly enough tests to go around. Sorry, but you aren’t rich enough, famous enough, or athletic enough to warrant being bumped to the front of the line. Athletes, CEOs and celebrities are being tested. You? You’re just an average American who must be near death to be given a test.

Still, you’re the brave one. Invincible, you might believe. It’s all going to be OK.

Then, perhaps, it gets hard to breathe as your fever spikes. You can’t seem to catch your breath. Few things scare people like not being able to breathe, and here you are, the bravery beginning to falter, the invincibility beginning to wane. The feverish chills course through your body as your panic increases. If only you had been smarter…

You miss your family. They are not able to come see you. If you die, you will die alone. There will be no memorial, no chance at good-byes, no final moments you share. Your final moments were spent convincing others of your bravery while convincing yourself of your invincibility. Now, the illusion is gone as you face your own mortality.

If only I had listened…

Have I infected my children? My spouse? My friends? Time will tell if you are the one they point to as a reason for their suffering, their loss, their pain. Perhaps you all will learn a lesson. If it is not too late.

You wonder how you are going to pay for all this care you are receiving. Will your family be bankrupt as a result of your illness? How will they survive if you do not? How will they survive even if you do?

It’s gotten so hard to breathe. The doctors, all bundled up in their protective gear, come to tell you the bad news. You will need a ventilator to live. They will sedate you, put you in a drug-induced coma, so that you don’t gag on the tube they are about to put down your throat. You want to be strong and brave again, but all you can do is look around you. Is this the last thing you will ever see?

I want to touch my children, tell them how much I love them. I want one last kiss with my spouse…

Those things will have to wait, and as you quickly fade asleep you wonder if they’ll ever come.

If only I had listened….

Some things just are, and they are perfect that way.

February 12, 2020 / Tom

I can’t really remember the day I fell in love with her. Not because I’m uncaring or just ignorant. I can’t remember falling in love with her because I can’t remember ever not being in love with her. It’s like I can’t remember my first breath. I know it happened because, well, here’s another, but I don’t remember it. It’s just always been.

Perhaps love is just something that exists like the soul. In my relationship with the Divine, my current soul is not a separate thing but a separated thing. I am one with a vast sea of divinity who has, in this experience, been separated like a droplet of rain from the ocean. Maybe love is like that. I’ve always loved her, in one form or another, and am blessed to know her again in this life. Just as I’ve known her in the eternity of that sea, not as me, not as her, but as we.

It could be, but I see no point in continually questioning it. Sometimes what is, like our breath, just is and questioning it becomes just a waste of time. Instead, I choose just to enjoy it, to bask in its light, for however long it blesses my existence. I see no point in trying to remember, or seek out, my first breath. Instead, I will just inhale and enjoy the life that breath brings. Then I will exhale and enjoy that too.

Truth is that I don’t really remember the origins of a lot of things. I know they’re there though, and I can enjoy them as freely as someone who saw the first sunrise, or the first wave caress the beach, or the first steps I ever took. It’s just a matter of presence, of enjoying what is despite not knowing much about it, and of trusting that I don’t need to know everything. Some things just are, and they are perfect that way.

Random Thoughts

January 7, 2020 / Tom

Today, a moment in time.

Tomorrow is just a dream.

Yesterday only happened in my mind.

Today is yesterday’s tomorrow and tomorrow’s yesterday. Yesterday, today was just a dream. Tomorrow, today will have happened only in my mind. I realized just now I need to stop wasting time thinking about such things. Today is too important to squander, tomorrow never comes and yesterday cannot be changed.

Cliches…ugh. Sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees (see what I did there?).

I want to hug you. I feel you beside me but when I turn to touch you my fingertips find only dust. Perhaps this is my mind playing tricks on me, tormenting me for wanting something beyond my control, or teaching me to let go of wants and replace them with reality. What I want is out there, what I have is right beside me.

Now, how to make what I want all that is right here.

Dammit. I’m back to yesterday.

So much I would change. Not because I want to change yesterday but because I want to change today. I wish things were different. I wish life was easier and that I was aware of the luster in the treasures I had found.

Actually, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve been blessed with the wisdom of a wild experience and know I can rise above just about any challenge thrown my way. Life does not become easier in the absence of challenge. It becomes easier in surviving them.

Thinking about yesterday creates such confusion. That confusion, however, guides us to a clarity of truth.

There is nothing like knowing someone who is the beautiful mixture of heart, soul and humanness. It’s even better when you love that someone and you get to quickly forgive their imperfections because of how fucking perfect they are. They toil, they quake and they are afraid but mostly they are loving, supportive and more courageous than they will ever likely know.

Treasure those moments when you can just sit back and watch. Those tears clouding your eyes and the joy in your heart are often all you ever will need to know about life. It’s not pride you feel in those moments of clarity; it’s pure admiration.

Use your imagination for a moment.

Imagine you are watching TV. Who do you want next to you keeping you warm? Where are you? That’s the person you should be with and that is the place you should be sharing.

I wrote an entire chapter to my new book while in the shower this morning. I love when that happens, and it’s even better when I finally have the chance to write it down. Someday.

Sirens (Finding the Light in the Darkness)

January 2, 2020 / Tom

I have heard the sirens.

As a firefighter and EMT, they were part of the job. They were part of the adrenaline rush. Like the bugles announcing the pending arrival of a cavalry, the sirens let those who had called know we were coming. I have always loved the sounds of the sirens for that reason.

Then one day the sirens came for me.

I was blinded by a brain injury so I could not see them. I could only hear them, and I knew what story they were telling. In all the times I had ridden in the back of an ambulance with a patient I had always wondered when it would be my turn. That time had come.

Some I had ridden with were taking their last ride in the back of the “bus”. I watched some take their last breaths. I heard some whisper unintelligible prayers just before the end. I always had wondered if the language of the afterlife was something none of us were meant to understand. Even when those final words were words I knew, they always seemed to have some meaning I could not fathom.

Sometimes I would hold their hand at the end and feel the energy drain from their flesh.

I felt that their energy was not gone, it was just not there. It had traveled somewhere else, somewhere I had been before and would see again. As I took my ride in the bus, listening to the sirens play their bugle call, I insisted I was not ready to go. This would not be my last ride and this would not be the end of my story.

Fear and Focus

I was, however, afraid. More afraid than I’d ever been in my life. I had decided a short time before they arrived that I would take this ride to its fullest, but something about being on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance unnerved me. Each time I had been in the back of a bus I was the strong one, the one who was there to help. Now I was the patient, blind and weakened in my condition. Yet in that numbing darkness I could still see a tiny flame that pulsed with the rhythm of the siren. I focused on that fire, the tiny glimmer of hope of survival.

That flame was tiny, but it was mighty.

The paramedics were asking me questions and offering me reassurance. I told them I knew the drill and that I had lied to many people in the back of a bus. They answered that they weren’t lying, and I believed them. The little flame suggested that they were telling the truth. I just had to believe.

Things to Say

I knew I had things yet to say. There were the visions of my children that flashed across the darkness. My eyes had failed but my heart had perfect vision. The eyes are not the only parts of me that could see and I was learning that with each passing second. In my heart I was telling them how loved and admired they were. Had I told them that before, I wondered? Of course I had but this time seemed different. It wasn’t my mouth talking, it was my heart.

I hugged them too, a hug that felt more powerful then it ever had. I wasn’t hugging them with my arms, I was was hugging them with my heart. There was such a vast difference between the two.

I saw the Sun rise in my vision and I heard a poem recited in the wails of the siren. The vivid colors of the dawn and the beautiful rhythm of the prose rose from someplace new. My heart was painting on a new canvas and the words flowed from a place I had once only small glimpses of. I still had things to say, stories to tell, but they would not come from my head. They would come from a new and mostly uncharted territory.

I would let my heart tell the story. My heart would be the artist. I would surrender thought to feeling and let instinct be my guide.

Lessons in the Darkness

There were so many lessons learned that night. Time is short. Our moments are fleeting. Bad things happen to good people. The sirens and those sounding those bugles are heroes.

There were some, however, not so cliche.

When my mind is the guide, I see things through clouded and cracked glass. However, when my heart is guiding me my vision is much clearer. In doing something heart-centered I do it with a clear purpose. Mindfulness is not a practice worth much time for me, heartfulness is.

“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” My mind will always be burdened by scars and the traumas of living, but my heart sheds them in the purity of forgiveness. Scars and scabs cannot stain a heart that is pure; such anomalies cannot exist there. What I learned on that autumn night was that my task has always been to reduce the focus on my brain and let my heart lead the way.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

The barriers I had built against love resided in my mind and all its traumas. It was time to tear them down and burn them to ash in that little flame I saw in the darkness.

(Coming soon, a short story based on finding the flame in the darkness. Follow my Amazon page here.)

The Ghost Beside Me

December 18, 2019 / Tom

A ghost sat beside me, rocking slowly on the small, wooden chair. In the steely silence I could hear only two things; the rhythmic beating of my heart and the creaking of that chair. I hear no breaths, no gusts of wind howling just outside my room nor sounds of discarded leaves being thrown about by autumn’s fury. I can only here Death sitting in that chair, slowly waiting for it to be my time.

My eyes had been blinded by the rage of life, my brain injured by the loss of blood. I needed to see, to stand, to walk among my loved ones again. In my blindness I could hear so many things once forgotten. I could hear the smile of my children. I could hear the laughter that came from deep within them. I could hear the sight of a flower blooming in the sunlight, and I could hear the sounds of winter thawing. I could hear the sound of a smile, of a loving glance, and the rising tide of an ocean a thousand miles away.

My body could no longer steady itself against the invisible strings of gravity. The sense of touch I had taken for granted had now changed and, with it a truth I had always depended. The security of all I had known vanished in a breath, replaced by something I was told was “a new reality”. It was a reality I had never requested but had no choice in accepting.

On an opposite side of the room sat another ghost rocking slowly on another chair. There was a warm light pulsing rhythmically with each movement, and a sweet melody vibrating in a heavenly tempo. I could feel the bliss of Life caressing those parts of me left darkened by the stroke, the want of life pulling me out of the numbness. There was, in this moment, a choice to be made and a path to be taken.

I felt no fear in this choice, only a surrender to the reality, swimming in the knowledge that had no control over my circumstance. In that surrender, though, rose a feeling in the numbness, a truth that shouted to me that while control had been lost, I could regain it. I could control my choices from that moment on. I could choose Death, or I could choose Life, and I could ride the wave toward either end. Death offered me a final surrender. Life offered me the challenge I was born to accept. Death seemed easy. Life seemed all-too-difficult.

I chose life, and in the shadows of that night I found my vision. In that unsteadiness I found true balance. In that challenge I found a love of Life, of living, and asked Death to wait his turn. He seemed to smile in return having played his part in the dance of Life.

Death knows, though, that my choice is a temporary one, and that one day he will extend his hand and I will have no option but to take it. Life, however, knows something too. She knows that circumstances arrive, and within them comes a litany of choices. Life knows that she exists in the choices we make within the experience, and she knows that those choices determine to which degree we can enjoy her company. We can either make choices that have us dancing with Life, of we can make choices that have us existing until the hand of Death grabs us in a grip from which we cannot break free.

I have discovered in my own time that Life offers us liberation in the choices we make. Liberation is born in the struggles of our time, and Life is realized in the sweat and blood of our liberation. True living is liberation, and liberation exposes us to the glory of true living. They go together like yin and yang, important ingredients that cannot be separated and are as necessary for one other as the beating heart is to breath and breath is to the beating heart. Fear is but a shackle we have placed upon ourselves, and love is the key that can set us upon a gratitude spawned from great Living. There is great liberation in appreciating the Sunrise whose memory may be all I have one day. Loss shows us the way to gratitude, and gratitude shows us a way from loss. We can be so liberated in sharing gratitude not just in what we have, but for what we have lost.

So whether it is struggling to keep upright when your brain is unable to keep control, or hiking a trail among the beasts of wild and untamed nature, or just getting out of bed to face another day, the challenge itself offers great opportunity for liberation. We can liberate ourselves from the confines of a bed in our dizziness. We can liberate our bodies from the delusion of safety within our unnatural box. We can liberate ourselves from the dread created in the lack of fulfillment. We are the choosers of our own path.

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52 Years (A Warrior’s Lament)

November 8, 2019 / Tom

I met a man recently. He was a strong-looking older man, a Vietnam Veteran, a warrior, a man who’s had his own sense of loss and of struggle yet somehow survived. He had cancer twice, an illness he says was due to Agent Orange exposure during the war. He lost friends in battle, a lost even more in the years since. Yet I could sense in his struggle he had something that got him through it, something that prompted a man who had been beaten to rise, who had been nearly defeated to turn his chest to the demons and beat them into submission.

It didn’t take long before I found out what that something was.

“My wife died last month. After 52 years of marriage she’s gone.,” he said with a tear in his eye. I could feel the pain ripple across the room. I could see his agony restrained in tired eyes. I could hear his prayer for just one more kiss, for one more word from her whispered in his ear, for just one more minute with the woman he loved.

Nothing, it seems, can make a strong warrior crumble like the loss of half his heart. He seemed completely unwilling to surrender to age or to an enemy. But I could sense this old and wise man was completely ready to surrender to the loss of his great love. I could sense that no battle he’s ever waged was as fierce as the one he was in now. It seemed he knew that he had no part in this outcome, and that a broken heart could do what no bullet, no struggle, could.

He had married her before he was sent into combat, something not unique to the time. He loved her right away, and when faced with the likelihood of his death they decided to commit to the love they felt. If he died in combat he would die her husband, and she his wife.

He survived the war and the effects it had on his mind and his health. In their life she had often said that she had been married to two men, once to the man she knew before the war, and again to the same man after the war. He shared that she had been the reason he fought hard to survive many battles, but fought even harder to survive the long one that came when he got home. She had been there, always, his partner and his love, and he honored her as his wife each day of their life together. It was an honor that gave him life, even after he was certain his life would be over.

“She was quite a babe,” he said. “The guys in my platoon were always asking me about her. I think they loved her too. Here, look.”

He pulled out his wallet and showed me a picture of a stunning woman. The picture was black and white, but looked brand new, and I couldn’t help but understand his admiration for her. She looked like a pin-up model, even if the picture was 52 years old.

“She took this so I could take it to Nam with me. I carried it with me every minute of every day, and I have ever since. It has never left me, and I’ll be buried with it.”

“She is beautiful,” I replied. “Let’s be honest though, you had to be quite the catch to have her marry you.”

“I wasn’t bad, but I was better with her. That’s the thing about us men. We know we are good on our own, but we also know we are great with the right woman by our side. Even if she’s not there, she’s there. You know?”

I agreed with him, thinking of my partner who was over a thousand miles away doing her thing. I thought about how much I missed her and wished she was near. I hate distance, and I hate weeks of separation, but I realize that there is a good reason for the displeasure I feel in the separation.

I offered him my condolences, and though the words were heartfelt they seemed hollow in the space between us. He accepted with the graciousness of a man who was searching for any comfort he could find, even if it came from a stranger. The weeks since her passing may have helped him restrain the streams of his tears, but they seemed to do little to lessen the lake of emotion that gave them breath. I shook his hand and he thanked me while I issued a prayer that this would not be the last time I got to see this man.

“Namaskar,” I whispered to the ether. A part of me recognized this man and I believe a part of him recognized me. Though strangers until this moment, we were brought together to share a bit of wisdom, he to show me something and me to offer my gratitude in return. Perhaps I offered him some comfort but I know he offered me some perspective. In this brief interlude I remembered my grandfather and grandmother as well as the love I have inside me.

What a gift, and one I’m happy to share.

The Fragility of My Mortality

November 4, 2019 / Tom

It was bedtime and, as often the case, I went in to sit with my 13-year old son to end the day. Being a parent can be hard and sometimes the lessons we need to teach our children can be tough, but at the end of the day I like to reinforce to my kids the truth that I love them and that I am their Dad. That means that I am not just a teacher, but a role model and a man who will always do the best I can. For me, being a Dad isn’t just about teaching hard life lessons and preaching a certain kind of virtue. It is also about being vulnerable and exhibiting strength in that vulnerability.

After our talk, I ended with a “Good night, my son. I love you. You are my favorite boy in the entire Universe.” That had been my agreement with my son since he was born, and I’ve stated it so many times I could not hope to count the recitations. Despite our familiarity with that mantra, it never seems old to me. Each time I say it brings a certain amount of truth, newness and commitment into the space we share. I know soon, if he still allows me, the word boy will change to “man”. The one thing that won’t change is that he is my favorite man ever born.

The conversation used to go like this:

“I love you, bud. You are my favorite boy in the entire Universe.”

“And you are my favorite Daddy in the entire Universe.”

“I’m your only Daddy.”

“And I’m your only son.”

He has an advantage over his sisters. My middle child is currently my favorite 15-year old in the Universe, and my oldest is currently my favorite 25-year old. My son is simply my favorite boy, young man, male, whatever. He need share that favoritism with no other in his gender. He is the only one of his kind, the “man” of the house when I’m not around although his sisters have no need for a “man” of the house. They’re quite easily the strongest, most able and most independent people I know.

“Dad, give me a big hug.”

I certainly don’t say “no” to those opportunities. I assume, with some wisdom gained through the experiences I’ve had with his sisters, that those hug requests will diminish in time. This was the first year I wasn’t invited to walk with him on Halloween, that privilege being extended to his friends alone. My middle daughter didn’t even dress up this year, deciding to attend a high school haunted house with her friends instead. My oldest gave up doing those things that remind parents that they have children. Now, I have adults, and with them nothing but memories of smiles coming through princess makeup and GI Joe camouflage. I can still see each of my kids in my memory, their bags and plastic pumpkins in hand, running in dresses and scary costumes, enjoying that holiday as only kids can.

I used to be Daddy. Now, I am Dad. I used carry them on my shoulders, now I can barely lift them. They used to rely on me for so much, now I am barely tolerated (even when they rely on me). So I will never say “no” to a hug request, and I will put all my energy into that hug while it lasts.

Last night’s hug filled me with great joy, but also with great sadness. I could feel the fragility of my mortality looking over my shoulder. I could feel the moments fading. I could sense my end, although with that sense came an intense focus on the moment I was in with my favorite boy in the entire Universe.

I realized in that split second that I would not be around to see much of my son’s triumphs, or be there to help him in his tribulations. I would not be there to hug him when he needed one, or talk him through a question that entered his mind. I would not see so much of this young man’s life. I could feel a tear being born in my soul, but he would not see it. For now he would just be hugging his Dad, oblivious to the fragility of mortality that plagues us all. I could give him the gift of presence, knowing full well that one day he would fully understand the burden that mortality brings all of us who love someone deeply. The way I love my son, and my daughters, who will one day need me only to find I am gone.

That is where my “fuck” comes from. That fuck I give in this life, that fuck that says I want to be there for them, see their lives unfold, experience their joys and help shoulder their sadness. Mostly though, I know the sadness they will feel in my passing and I want to spare them from that burden. I know, however, that is a wish that will never be granted.

I woke up this morning understanding what this experience means. It means that I can’t be wasting time on the mundane, the meaningless drivel that often permeates our lives. Instead, I need to focus on the remarkable, and sharing that remarkable with those I share a love with. I need to leave a legacy of love, of words, of lessons and of memories because one day those things are all that will be left of me. I have spent a lot of my life focused on nonsense and I’ve wasted my energy on plenty of endeavors that have little meaning to those parts of me I will leave behind. I cannot build my memorial on fiction, I must build it in truth.

Perhaps that is what being a parent teaches us. Perhaps it need not be so much about “raising” our children but more about leaving them a legacy. Not a legacy of wealth and comfort, but a legacy that they can lean on when times get tough. Perhaps our role is not just to warm them, but teach them how to warm themselves and not leaving them to wander on their own, but to share with them a compass of morality, of character, and of love. That way, when they call for me and I can’t come they can still hear my voice, feel my hug, and know that I have never, ever, left them.

And I will always be their Dad.

The Hour of Separation

June 17, 2019 / Tom

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” ~Khalil Gibran.

There, this man finds himself knowing a depth eternal in its scope, not waning in the process of knowing itself in sadness.

Not long before, I woke to see her image in the shadows of an early morning. I’ve long memorized the contours of her form, the way she hides herself from the night’s disturbances, the way her hair flows from the shadows and her breath can be heard through the various white noises of our space. I swear I can hear her breath despite the noise, but I also know that it is quite possible that I hear her breath in me, just like the subtle way I feel life in her living, and love in her affection.

There I lay, just studying her in the darkness not wanting to disturb a thing. Being beside her is like arriving at a lush oasis, a place where the storms around me lessen in their ferocity and my thirst is quenched in a single touch. It is here, in her presence, that I awaken to awaken, finding myself in total bliss, breathing in the joy and gratitude I cannot, and have no desire to, run from.

Yet, as has been the way with the process of our journey, such a bounty must end and the thirst must return to be quenched another day. As is often the case, we arrive to depart where we found ourselves reunited, and my heart again breaks open in bits of stoic bewilderment as I turn to watch her leave. I know by the look on her face in that indescribable way we feel each other that she knows this pain as well. I appear less able to appreciate whatever beauty there is in this separation.

What is there in a stoic man who once was so devoted to his own solitude as to wish its liberated end? Perhaps I knew the dysfunction that demanded my aloneness, and the imprisonment I had actually created in the wanting of such a thing. Aloneness is liberating when it breeds the awareness of love, but it can be a prison when it builds a wall to love. Solitude is a wondrous space when it blooms under the spring sun, but our petals wilt when that solitude hides us in the shadows, afraid to face the light of what has hurt us before.

I seek not to hide behind those bars while calling myself “free”. I seek the wide open spaces where I see my soul dancing in the distance, her hair twirling in the breeze, her smile glistening in the morning sun. I seek no separation in the prisons we often build searching for safety. Liberation is not safe. It’s a space wrought with danger, and known through our sweet victory over both the wounds of our past and the fear they inspire. True liberation is often crawling to love’s sweet precipice, looking down into the abyss, and knowing you are free to fall or crawl back to safety. The experience of love is, though, in the plummet through the mysterious and formless spaces the child in us often fears to go.

That is where I am, plummeting through the formless mystery as my heart breaks open, and I become one with the depths of a realization; I have no idea how deep this goes, and I have yet to find that place where I will land. I just know this love, the depth of which I’ve yet to fully understand, and I know the beauty of the oasis we find ourselves in all-too-infrequently and the madness of the thirst that is a companion way too often.

I shall draw the bowstring of love until it touches my cheek and I shall let loose the arrow of truth until our hearts are united once again. Perhaps that arrow will pierce the hearts of lying demons that play tricks with us in the shadow of our safety. Perhaps that arrow will be yet another rung on the ladder of a truth two souls feel in the open presence that they share. Perhaps that arrow of truth floats in our internal compass, pointing us to the truth of our union, directing us to the True North of our journey together, and finds us in an oasis where we reside much more than we leave.

There is a wild truth in this existence, and as I watch her leave I know its power and its promise. What prose there is left to write I cannot be sure, but I am certain of its existence.

Healing (A Poem with some prose)

June 2, 2019 / Tom

What if today,

We found ourselves centered in the midst of our own Being?

Could we stroke the hair

Without owning the despair

Of the one we love?

Could we somehow find the balance,

To love without owning?

Without owning the one we love?

Without owning their demons they play with in the night?

Without owning the lies they tell themselves in the moments of their despair?

It’s a challenge, no doubt.

The Savior in me wants to die on the cross for you,

To save you from your sins, to cast the devils the beguiles you into the Sea’s abyss.

And banish your tears,

Exile them well beyond the fabled gates of heaven.

But the lover in me knows there is a much harder choice.

I must let you go to wallow in your misery,

Allow you to wade in that ocean of darkened truth,

I will not let you drown, no….I will die to save you then,

But no person alive has ever become the strongest swimmer they can be

From the security of a lifeboat, of the safety of a sandy beach.

We must all come close to drowning to know the beauty of this life,

The wonders of our own strength,

The truth of who we are indeed.

Knowing love will not allow us to sink beneath the surface.

If we drown, it will be of our own choosing.

We can always push the outstretched hand of love away,

One last breath before we sink, exhaled in the denial of one truth,

For the finality of another.

We are all blessed creators, even in our moments of uncertainty.

For it is we who create even the darkest moments we have wallowed in.

_____________

I have several scars, one of which resides within my left eyebrow. It was the result of a sucker punch, but that’s a story for another day. I remember when I was in the emergency room getting stitched up, the doctor doing the stitching said these poignant words to me.

“It may start to itch as it heals. Don’t scratch it, or it will never heal. Let the healing process do its thing.”

As I’ve gotten older, and a bit wiser, I’ve realized that piece of advice is a great metaphor for all of the wounds, both emotional and physical, I have that needed to be healed. The more attention I gave them, the more I scratched them when they itched, the less likely they were to heal and the more likely they were to get infected. If I could only master leaving them to the natural process of healing they would heal fantastically without any intentional effort of my mind or ego. In fact, the only mindful intention I would give them was in the mastery of not picking at them. Believe me, that isn’t always easy.

That does not mean that we should ignore our wounds. We do, after all, need to get stitches from time to time. There is a time, though, when we need to let go of the focus we place on our wounds and allow the natural process of healing to take place. Sometimes, we need to get the hell out of the way, and focus on other parts of life, if we ever want to be truly healed.

That is a great reminder for me today, and a pretty awesome intention to set as I begin my morning.